Building a Stout, Versatile Linux Small Business Server

Selecting Best of Breed

October 17, 2008

Linux oldtimers have known for years that it's not
necessary to go into hock for expensive, proprietary networking gear,
because Linux comes with a powerhouse networking stack. It also comes with
a host of first-rate network services such as intrusion detection,
firewalling, proxies; file, print, Web, and email services; excellent
groupware and messaging; genuine secure remote access and administration;
secure wireless; diagnostic, monitoring, and repair tools; backups and
restores; and most everything else needed to run the small-to-big
enterprise. In this new series we're going to learn how to run a business
network on Linux using best-of-breed applications. Best-of-breed, happily,
is a difficult and debatable proposition because there are so many good
choices, so we'll just have to roll up our sleeves and do our best.

Related Linux Help

In this series our workhorses will be Ubuntu Server Edition and Voyage
Linux. Ubuntu Server Edition is a good, sensible fluff-free bundle that
makes a great LAN server. In addition to the usual
mail/file/print/Web/etc. servers, it includes automated and unattended
network installations of new PCs, one-click Active Directory integration
for the poor souls who must have that, and a commercial support option.

Voyage is a very stripped-down Debian Linux; the stock installation is
68 megabytes. Unlike most embedded Linuxes, Voyage comes with the excellent
apt-get package manager. Most tiny Linuxes sacrifice the package
manager, so they are difficult to upgrade or add new software. With Voyage
you have the entire world of Debian available to you, so customizing your
own gear is easy. It's great for firewalls and routers, and specialized
servers that need a small footprint.

I see some fine *BSD fans raising their hands, and they are correct-
FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD also have all these things. In some cases
they're even better than their Linux cousins, so as the series progresses
I'll include some pointers to these as well.

Avoiding Traps and Pitfalls

TCP/IP networking is
supposed to be platform-agnostic; in other words, you should be able to
plug any client into a network and have access to all network
resources. Of course in the real world it's a bit more difficult than
that, as so many vendors invest more resources into locking customers in
by devious and unsavory means, rather than giving them good reasons to
stay. While I love to crab at Microsoft's non-standard implementations of
networking standards, don't forget that Apple didn't even include a TCP/IP
stack in MacOS. If you wanted TCP/IP you had to purchase third-party
software like Thursby's Dave. Sure, MacOS had AppleTalk , which
made networking with other Macs as easy as plugging them in. As long as
all the Macs on the local AppleTalk network were running the same MacOS
version, that is, or hadn't been made obsolete by an OS upgrade that left
not-very-older hardware behind.

Linux is your insurance against lock-in and forced obsolescence, which
are just two of the many reasons I like it so much. If you need real
interoperability, and not the fake kind that exists only in press releases,
then you want FOSS (Free/Open Source Software).